Given the competitive landscape of communication services, service providers need to be more innovative in seeking new sources of revenue. When developing new services, service providers are ever mindful of cost. In general, the introduction of new communication services requires a large investment in new infrastructure, not to mention development costs. It is observed that despite the popularity of the Internet and its many applications, the development of data communications are not well integrated particularly across different organizations; for example, directory services.
Traditionally, directories are operated by the respective organizations and are not shared, even though such organizations are collaborative “partners” in business or otherwise. This isolation stems in part from the fact there is no common infrastructure that is shared among the organizations. Each organization is understandably reluctant to invest in the infrastructure cost, as it is recognized that many partnership arrangements lack permanence to justify the investment. Another drawback is that traditional directory systems lack flexibility in the delivery of the information. That is, the directory information is conveyed over one type of communication medium.
The lack of integration of communication services is made more evident when examining the largely independent existence of telephony and data systems. That is, the advancement in services on the telephony side has not been well integrated on the data network side. Conventionally, a user is required to employ several disparate systems and service providers to engage in various modes of communication, ranging from telephony to instant messaging services. For each of these modes of communication, the user is forced to use different separate accounts with different telephone numbers and/or addresses. For example, cable television requires use of a subscriber's name and street address. This in effect creates islands of communication systems that do not interconnect because there are no “shipping lanes,” which define the mode or means of communications beginning with the most fundamental aspect, that of endpoint identification.
Therefore, there is a need for an integrated, flexible approach to providing directory services. There is also a need to deploy a communications service that utilizes existing infrastructure. There is a further need to support a new source of revenue for communication services.